For at least one climate activist, the prospect of human deaths occurring in the fight against so-called climate change is not a bridge too far to cross. Swedish climate activist Andreas Malm told The New York Times this week that he hopes that incidents of what he calls “climate sabotage” will increase, even if that means human deaths occur because of it.
Malm, the author of 2021’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire, argues that sabotage is a legitimate tactic in the fight to protect the Earth from the scourge of climate change, which used to be known as global warming. Malm is one of the progenitors of the Tire Deflator movement, in which activists deflate (or slash) the tires of SUVs, which they consider bad for the environment.
Malm would like to see sabotage on a much larger scale — even if that includes potential human deaths as a consequence.
“Well, I want sabotage to happen on a much larger scale than it does now,” Malm told the The Times. “I can’t guarantee that it won’t come with accidents. But what do I know? I haven’t personally blown up a pipeline, and I can’t foretell the future.”
In Malm’s distorted worldview, providers of fossil fuels, which have literally pulled millions of people out of abject poverty and deprivation, are literally guilty of killing people in the here and now.
“But the thing we need to keep in mind is that existing pipelines, new pipelines, new infrastructure for extracting fossil fuels are not potentially, possibly — they are killing people as we speak,” Malm exclaimed. “The more saturated the atmosphere is with CO2, putting more CO2 into the atmosphere causes more destruction and death.”
It is noteworthy that today’s official CO2 “saturation” level is 422.36 parts per million. As a percentage of the atmosphere, that’s only 0.042236 percent — the very definition of a trace atmospheric gas.
In Malm’s distorted view of reality, a 2024 Trump victory could signal dire consequences from the climate movement.
“Imagine you have a Trump victory in the next election — doesn’t seem unimaginable — and you get a climate denialist back in charge of the White House and he rolls back whatever good things President Biden has done,” Malm speculated. “What should the climate movement do then? Should it accept this as the outcome of a democratic election and protest in the mildest of forms? Or should it radicalize and consider something like property destruction?”
So, when the political Right loses, it needs to accept the outcome of elections and allow left-wing radicals free reign. To do otherwise is “insurrection.” But if the political Left, particularly the climate hysteria movement, loses, then all bets are off and even the most radical options should be on the table.
All efforts at climate diplomacy — the UN’s COP summists, the Paris agreement, and any other political solutions — have failed, according to Malm.
“All attempts to rein in this problem have failed miserably. Which means that, virtually by definition, we have to try something more than we’ve tried,” he told The Times.
In the past, Malm has argued that the sabotage of fossil-fuel infrastructure — most notably coal-fired power plants — is a legitimate form of “self defense” against the coming climate apocalypse.
“Sabotaging fossil fuel infrastructure is a form of self-defense, or perhaps humanitarian intervention,” Malm wrote in 2022. “On the premises of climate science, fossil fuels should be classified as projectiles fired into humanity — primarily toward the Global South. The question is not whether we have a right to destroy them; it is why people haven’t yet acted on the imperative.”
Those who believe that the climate cult is merely inhabited by zealous environmentalists who are seeking a cleaner planet free of fossil-fuel emissions should seriously look at the case of Andreas Malm. With his radical views of a coming climate war complete with sabotage of our energy infrastructure, he is viewed by many as a leader in the movement.
